Make haste slowly

The Senate failed to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This places us on a legal footing with Japan, Norway and the Netherlands, which have also signed but not ratified the international treaty.

By CYNTHAI STEAD

capecodtimes.com

By CYNTHAI STEAD

Posted Dec. 13, 2012 at 2:00 AM

By CYNTHAI STEAD

Posted Dec. 13, 2012 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

The Senate failed to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This places us on a legal footing with Japan, Norway and the Netherlands, which have also signed but not ratified the international treaty.

This isn't unprecedented. The environmental U.N. Kyoto Protocol was signed, but never ratified. Even before the treaty was signed, the Senate passed a resolution preventing ratification of any international agreement that "would seriously harm the economy of the United States," partly in response to the portion of the treaty that required developed countries to pay billions of dollars in climate reparations. So while President Clinton signed the treaty, it was never actually submitted to the Senate for ratification.

President Obama signed the U.N. Treaty on Disabilities in July 2009, but only submitted it for Senate ratification this month. During all that time, a majority of Democrats in the Senate have been in charge of allowing a vote to come to the Senate floor. Why the delay?

The treaty itself is not objectionable. Harkening back to the universal declaration of human rights in the U.N. charter, it includes those with disabilities in "the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations which recognize the inherent dignity and worth and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family."

It does not undercut our own laws on disabilities, as it states: "Nothing in the present Convention shall affect any provisions which are more conducive to the realization of the rights of persons with disabilities and which may be contained in the law of a State Party or international law in force for that (participating) State."

Article 10 states that "every human being has the inherent right to life," and Article 23 says that the disabled "shall retain their fertility on an equal basis with others." Further, it states: "Women and girls with disabilities are subject to multiple discrimination, and in this regard shall take measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment by them of all human rights and fundamental freedoms," which may be problematic in some ratifying theocracies.

What are some of the objections to the treaty? Article 18 states that "children with disabilities shall be registered immediately after birth," construed by some as a requirement that those with disabilities must register with the United Nations, although it appears to be more of about ensuring that disabled children are granted citizenship — and perhaps survival, in some cultures.

In 2010, the Heritage Foundation wrote about ratification, suggesting that adopting an international treaty would open the U.S. to legal suits about provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which did not go as far as the U.N. language. The article also stated, "When the United States becomes party to a treaty — particularly a human rights treaty — it obligates itself to the other treaty parties that it will comply with the terms of the treaty within U.S. territory. Therefore, the United States needs to take great care when deciding whether to ratify a treaty, because its terms — or the interpretation of those terms by the treaty committee — may not conform either to existing state and federal law or to prevalent American social, cultural, and economic norms."

That is the crux of the objections — not unwillingness of conservatives to uphold the rights of the disabled, but rather opposition to entering into any treaty that gives the U.N. a supervisory role. Many consider it to be a matter of national sovereignty. Some senators oppose membership in the U.N., period, let alone entering into any additional entanglements with what they regard as a corrupt and hypocritical body, far removed from its idealistic origins.

So even as Clinton knew that he didn't have a two-thirds majority for Kyoto, Obama knew that there wasn't enough Senate votes for him to submit his 2009 signature for ratification. Why he waited for a lame-duck Senate session in the midst of contentious budget negotiations is known best to him. If it's just to "win" by discrediting political